With NextLetter, each issue serves as your personal practice for crafting your future and brings you one step closer to your next opportunity. Together, we’ll go beyond predicting tomorrow—we’ll create it.

If you prefer to listen to this NextLetter, click here. In addition, if you want to get the essence of my book, What’s Next Is Now, listen here to hear two AI voices discussing it. A big thank you to the creator, Christian Plagemann.

Where Are You Going?

Recently, while attending a conference in Turkey with CEOs and corporate leaders, I took a day trip to a refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece. I showed up to volunteer and met some wonderful people, such as an African mother with a two-week-old child. I also met a man who was wearing a T-shirt with the words “Create Your Own Future.” What are the chances? I gave him and others a copy of my book.

This day in Lesvos also reminded me of a lesson I learned when I volunteered at a refugee camp in Berlin with my friend more than a decade ago. I had assumed that people coming to the camp with very little might need some essentials—clothes, games for children, things like that—but I quickly learned that they already had many of those provisions at camp.

What they really needed were things we’d never have guessed: suitcases and backpacks to carry their belongings to their next location, as well as train tickets to go to town to engage in activities that would help them fight boredom.

To me, that experience showed the power of compulsive curiosity and expansive empathy—wanting to learn what people really need and then trying to understand their point of view.

In Lesvos, I didn’t assume what people needed as I had a decade ago, so I just asked. And camp leaders told me one of their biggest needs was men’s underwear.

So I went to town and purchased hundreds of pairs of underwear. Selfishly, I felt good about helping people, even in what may seem like such a small way, and I felt good meeting so many smart and loving people who were living in a transition period of their journeys.

My trip made me reflect on the idea of transitions—about uncertainty and identity, about the tension between clarity and confusion, and about the notion that sometimes our decisions about the future are in our control and sometimes they’re not.

It’s a powerful experience volunteering in a refugee camp—where you witness the unexpected and you see life in ways you may take for granted.

As we consider our own transitions, maybe we should also think about another valuable lesson from such camps.

Opportunities arise from the courage it requires to take the uncertain step.

Podcast I Was On Recently

I recently joined Success Magazine's Amy Sommerville in her unscripted podcast:

What if you could overcome the fear of the unknown and create your future today? In this episode of Unscripted, Amy Somerville joins Google’s first Chief Innovation Evangelist Dr. Frederik G. Pferdt to explore how our curiosity and creativity shape who we become years from now—and how you can start to cultivate your ideal future now.

Quote I Love

Perfection is the Enemy of Your Future

I’ve had many major transitions in my life—moving to new homes and new countries, leaving secure jobs and trying new ventures (like this NextLetter!). Because of my moves, my children have also experienced their share as well.

It’s funny when you look at transition through the eyes of children—they don’t want to leave their friends and their comfort zones, even if you try to explain that the next steps will be even better. (They, like all of us, have to learn it on their own.)

The funny thing is that we all tend to do the same thing. When we consider a transition, we lean heavily on the certainties—wanting to know what the new house will look like, what the new job will entail, or how the new relationship will work out. But the truth is that it’s impossible to predict what life will be like when you shape-shift from one phase of life to another. 

If you wait for perfect clarity, you remain stuck.

What I’ve learned about transitions is that we should worry less about mapping out perfect, concrete conclusions, but rather do more to embrace the courage it requires to step into the unknown.

Why Pro-Con Lists Don’t Work

The typical advice that’s given for making a difficult decision: Make a pro-con list and see which side is longer than the other. There’s your answer! 

My caution about that approach is that our brains tend to default to the cons: It’s less taxing on our brain to not change, so your brain defaults to coming up with all kinds of cons that discourage you from change.

Next time you’re faced with a decision that will require transition—a move, a job, a relationship—ditch the idea of a pro-con list.

Instead, make a pro-only list.

Write out all the possible ways that this transition could work. The cons will still bubble up (your brain can’t help it!), but see if you can crowd them out—just to give yourself enough space to entertain the possibilities and summon the courage to open a door to a world you know little about.

The Case for Micro Dosing Life

When I took my first job at Google, I left a consultant job in Germany that I held for six weeks. The Google opportunity was based in Dublin. My wife and I had a 2-month-old son, and we just moved into an apartment together in Frankfurt.

Maybe it didn’t make sense to quit the position I held and move to a city where I had never even visited. But we did it, and I’m grateful we did. 

You don’t have to leap into the unknown blindfolded, like I did. When you think about transitions, leverage the mindstate of perpetual experimentation. This idea can help you see your future more clearly, which can be helpful if you don’t typically have a head-first-in-cold-water lens on life. 

Thinking about switching careers to teaching? Substitute for a few days or teach in a summer camp to get a sense of the rhythm and dynamic of teaching. Considering a move to a new city? Rent a home for a week in a neighborhood, rather than staying in a hotel in touristy areas, to get a truer sense of the community. Want to write a book? Start with a proposal. Want to own your own business? Start with a side hustle. 

Recently, a friend expressed interest in moving back to Germany, but he wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. I asked him to consider spending part of the summer there as a mini-experiment. They did so, and they got a sense of the schools, the people, and more—and used what they learned to decide to move there permanently.

The unknown can be equally scary and exciting, but you can use experimentation to help guide your transitions.

If dipping your toes into the water helps you decide to jump all the way in, then that’s a win in my book.

Let me know how you handled a recent transition. Respond to this email, and I may share your experience in a future NextLetter. My new book, What’s Next is Now, is available now.

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